San Juan Islands, WA

[/caption] This is a photo of some people kayaking along the San Juan Straight with Vancouver Island, British Columbia in the background. This is now my third post on my blog of photos from the San Juan Islands that I that I took last August. You can read about my trip in depth from my blog that I posted on August 27th. I was able to get so many awesome photos that I want to post as many as I can on my blog so I can share them more. The day that I took this photo was an absolute epic sunset opportunity. The sky’s were clear, the ocean was calm and the air was very still. Like many of my sunset shots taken on the island I took this photo at the San Juan County Park. I noticed that there were several kayakers paddling along the bay so I decided to try to capture some of them in my photos. The sun had already set so I knew that it wouldn’t be easy photographing moving objects while the sky’s were already darkened. They were pretty far from where I was standing so I had to change to my 55-250mm telephoto lens in order to zoom in as much as possible. I changed from shutter mode to Normal/Program mode so I could eliminate as much blur as possible. The aperture was at F5.7 and the shutter speed was at 1/13 second. Even though the light was dim I had to set the ISO to 100 and the white balance to -.1 in order to maximize the orange hue in the background. There were several different ways that I could have tackled this shot but I decided that this was the best way to get the best picture. I did however remove my warming and CIR-PL filter since the sun had already set and I wasn’t using shutter mode. I made sure to have my camera on a tripod as well as a bubble level and remote switch. In order to get this photo I chose the best way was to set my camera at a designated spot and wait for the kayakers to come in to view. However, you can see some blur on the paddles due to this. I could have tried panning but I felt that the entire photo would be blurry due to the low light and movement of the camera. You can also see some seagulls bobbing in the water near the kayakers. I can’t wait to get back to the islands next summer. This is truly a place that you need to visit when the weather is nice.